to woman: does your tree door need man help?

– Hattie and Sarah, aged 6

Yesterday I left school grinding my teeth at the actions and attitudes of some stressed middle-schoolers. But a morning with the littles celebrating the 100th day of school can restore every good feeling.

Another Drifting Pleats scarf. This is the second pattern I have knit three times (the first being Ann Budd’s Ruffle-Rib baby booties). Those conniving ladies at Knit/Purl knew I was good for a store sample. And really, who can say no to baby alpaca?

Everyone who wasn’t at Madrona has surely read about it by now, and any report from me would be less than complete anyway: I went for full-day classes on Saturday and Sunday, but didn’t spend the night at the hotel and missed rubbing elbows with the galaxy of knitterati. But maybe you haven’t seen half an Orsa mitten yet?

This was my Saturday class – Swedish TvÃ¥andsstickning with the estimable Nancy Bush. Now, I have been Nancy’s fangirl since I first cut my teeth on socks. When I heard she was teaching at Madrona, I knew it didn’t matter a lick what she was teaching: I needed to be there. As one of my classmates said, Nancy could have offered a class on chopping mushrooms and we all would have come. In fact, there were no mushrooms in the course summary, and better yet, there were mittens. Anyone who’s been a reader here for long knows I have a well-developed mitten fetish.

Nancy is just as enlightened and patient and down-to-earth as you might imagine, and she is also taller. Picture a towering benevolent queen in sensible neutrals with pockets conveniently located for stowing balls of yarn, radiating a halo of knitterly wisdom through the yarnovers of her exquisite cobweb of an Estonian lace shawl. Add spectacles and an abundance of woolen-spun hair the color of her skirt. I didn’t bring my camera, so that will have to suffice.

She passed out skeins of z-plied yarn from Sweden, which she calls Mora. We spent the first portion of the class winding them by hand with the help of our tablemates, chatting and listening to the history of the TvÃ¥andsstickning technique. (NB: there ought to be a dieresis over the second ‘a’ – I just can’t figure out to type it. But I’m feeling pretty proud of that ‘Ã¥’…. as much as I’m able to hear the subtleties, it’s pronounced tvo-ahnd-stik-ning.) This ancient way of knitting was nearly extinct until a very old mitten with an unusual construction was discovered in a slag heap. What’s so odd, you might say? It looks like a normal stockinet fabric except for some fancy raised stitches on the cuff, right? Check out the inside:

The researchers interviewed some of the oldest knitters in the area, and they remembered seeing this sort of knitting done. You work from both ends of the ball at once, alternating stitches rather than holding them together (TvÃ¥andsstickning translates as “two-end knitting”), and on every stitch you twist the next strand over the old one. If you’re adding a purl round accent, you bring the new strand under the old with every stitch. The decorative stitches are done with one strand in front, purling, and the other behind, knitting. It’s slow going and you have to pause and dangle after every round to untwist your yarn, and it’s essential to use a z-plied yarn rather than a typical s-plied, because the s-plied will twist more and more tightly and make horrible corkscrews. But it produces a very firm, durable fabric that’s entirely practical for a mitten, and I’ve found that practicing lets me establish a pretty good rhythm. And it’s such a pretty, dainty little mitten! I love it unreasonably.

Sunday was Intarsia with Lucy Neatby. I have long feared intarsia, and haven’t bothered to learn because reindeer jumpers make me shudder. So this was an opportunity to push myself in a direction I wouldn’t otherwise go under the tutelage of a master. Lucy is an encyclopedia of clever tricks applicable to any knitting, and I learned a lot of technical tidbits that will serve me well. I also learned to analyze colorwork charts and separate the good ones from the “evil, seductive rubbish,” that “H-shaped bobbins are the spawn of the devil,” and that “you just need to be belt and braces with cotton.” I learned all kinds of ways to cheat and use Swiss darning (duplicate stitch), crochet, and stranded knitting in combination to achieve complicated effects that would make you set your stash on fire and jump out a window if you tried to work them in intarsia. And lastly, I learned that I really am a stranded colorwork kind of girl. I love my Fair Isle and my Estonian socks and my Norwegian mittens and ski sweaters. It brings me joy to see their jolly little floats linking arms across the back of the work. I take pleasure in trapping them pretend, unpretend when they reach too far. I brought home a couple of striking semi-solid skeins of Socks That Rock mediumweight with every intention of plunging into an Armenian-knit hat as soon as may be. So don’t expect to see very much intarsia chez Blue Garter, but I’m glad to have improved myself in learning more about it.

And that’s my Madrona story. I could go on about how I barely restrained myself from bowing down before Stephanie and offering to fetch her coffee, and how I drove thirty minutes in the wrong direction trying to find the house of Mr. Garter’s cousins in Renton, but this post is getting pretty long. I met lovely knitters, I learned as much as I could stuff into my brain, and I can’t wait for next year!

Holy comments, Batman! I’m truly flattered by the love for the Blue Thistle jacket, and I’m working my way through to say thanks and answer questions. I was especially tickled that so many first-time commenters came out of the woodwork – thanks, new readers and not-so-new readers chiming in for the first time!

Since you all seem to like seeing new sweaters, it’s convenient that I can finally unveil a secret knit that was finished in November. I’m seeking permission to bring a photo over here, but for the moment you can skip over to the ShibuiKnits page to peek at Spring Thaw! And why, yes, I am just a little bit pleased to be finally modeling the sample of my first published pattern.

And while you’re over there, you can also take a gander at my Ivy Socks – I’ve been sitting on these puppies since July. Whew! It feels good to have these knits out in the world! The patterns are available from Knit/Purl, or from your local ShibuiKnits retailer.

Less than 48 hours until I leave on my pre-dawn drive to Tacoma for a heavenly weekend of Madrona workshops! I get to bask in the wisdom of knitterly goddesses Nancy Bush and Lucy Neatby, my friends. And will any of you be in attendance? I hope we’ll meet in perusing the booths of yarny goodness. I’ve decided to allow myself a skein or two from Blue Moon’s Raven Clan (if there’s any left), because I think it’s such an interesting experiment to do a whole run of different black colorways, and because there’s no black yarn in my stash, but throw yourself between me and the credit card swiper if you see me reaching for anything else, okay? Look for a full report on Monday!